“Home of the Fearless has serious conflicts with the Black Blood Group, Lost Paradise, and the others. The people in Home of the Fearless are mostly former base-level military officers — junior officers, along with some jin people and iron people. The reason they didn’t follow the Eastern Theater Command north was their leadership. Soldiers are direct people — they go where their leaders go.”
Zhao Zilong spoke without particular emotion. “Their leaders made mistakes, so they made the same mistakes. But their fundamental nature isn’t bad.” A pause. “My father incited the death-eaters to purge the senior military command. Once that happened, those soldiers were freed from the confusion of misplaced loyalty. They formed Home of the Fearless. Started farming. Kept to themselves.”
She continued after a moment. “I was conflicted for a long time. My father on one side, what I knew to be right on the other. Then I met Shao Yuanzheng — a death-eater in Home of the Fearless. We became close friends. Then my father had him killed.” Her voice stayed level. “I understood then that if you don’t act, you can’t keep what you value.”
She didn’t say what came after. Shen Cong didn’t need her to.
She’d joined Home of the Fearless. Started working against New Hope Laboratory and the death-eaters openly. Father and daughter became enemies.
He nodded once, picked up the welding torch, and went back to the bumper repair. He’d wanted to understand the death-eater relationships, not collect someone’s personal history.
Watching the sparks from the welding arc, Zhao Zilong said: “What about you, Colonel Chen? A colonel leaving Anhui Provincial District alone — you must have been given a mission for the Command?”
“No.”
“I think you’re a person with a story.”
“No.”
She adjusted her sharkskin cloak, shook her head slightly, and walked back to the others.
Under the extended Wings of Light, Shen Cong kept working without any visible reaction.
He’d understood something a long time ago: you process your own pain privately. You don’t tell your story to every person you meet. Almost nobody will understand it anyway — most will just watch from where they stand, waiting for the moment to laugh.
The only thing to do was keep the secrets buried and get stronger, step by step.
It had been true before the apocalypse. It was still true now.
A person could have a life full of extraordinary things, and if they were a lymph-laggard, it wouldn’t matter — someone would still come to drain their lymphatic fluid, and they’d die in a ruin somewhere, picked apart by scavengers. Lucky, a skeleton left behind and buried by dirt. Unlucky, nothing left at all.
But if you were strong — then people with stories came to you and told them voluntarily.
That’s how it works.
Welding complete. He guided Great Vajra through the realloy and extension process, restoring the High-Voltage Perimeter Grid bumper system to full function. Then he ate, drank enough water, and let himself rest properly.
The road ahead required it.
At two-thirty in the afternoon, Lu Hang returned with the iron person called Old Wei.
The vehicle: a military jeep, shell modified with armor plating, a dozer blade mounted at the front, and several large core-weapon blades hanging from both sides — similar in arrangement to Great Vajra’s Flying Wing Knives, if considerably smaller in scale.
Compared to Great Vajra, the jeep was a toy. But with the weapons loaded on it, it had a certain presence. And in terms of mobility on broken terrain, it had clear advantages.
Along with Old Wei came a bag of Activity fruit — three varieties. Potatoes, pomegranates, hawthorn berries. Not a large quantity; thirty crystals bought only a small portion, and the rest was provided by Home of the Fearless as an advance payment — protection fees for the escort of Old Wei, Zhao Zilong, and two other death-eaters northward.
The soldiers of Home of the Fearless wanted to return to the Command’s ranks. They were paying for the opportunity.
He loaded the fruit, sent the drone up for a route survey, confirmed the path ahead was clear, and said: “Ready to move.”
He started Great Vajra first, heading along the Hushen Expressway toward the Chuma Expressway — straight into the heart of ratman territory.
The jeep had no radio. He threw them a walkie-talkie.
“When we hit the ratmen, I’ll hold fifty kilometers per hour and push through without slowing. Stay close to my vehicle — use the draft behind me, stay in the vacuum zone. If the ratmen get between us, I can’t easily reach you. Don’t let that happen.”
“Understood.” Zhao Zilong’s voice was clean and direct.
Great Vajra warmed up, shifted through the gears, and settled at fifty kilometers per hour. The dozer blade flattened across the front — anything on the road surface went to the sides. Five meters of vehicle width, occupying two lanes simultaneously. The rumble of the drive over broken terrain.
Unstoppable. The feeling of it was something he never stopped appreciating — the sensation that nothing in the world could hold back what he’d built.
No answers found in Nanjing. Keep moving. Go further. Find the answers somewhere else.
What Activity was. What metal radiation really meant. He was still looking.
Behind Great Vajra, the military jeep stayed close.
The road surface that Great Vajra dismissed as irrelevant was still a serious obstacle for the jeep — every rock and debris patch that bounced off Great Vajra’s bumper was something the jeep had to navigate. Significant jolting throughout.
Fortunately: the jeep was a vehicle, Activity-reinforced, more durable than it looked. And the people inside were an iron person and death-eaters, physically enhanced well above baseline — they could absorb the ride.
Old Wei drove with one hand and talked. “Zilong — is this Chen Kun actually an Anhui Provincial District colonel?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Doesn’t feel right.” Old Wei shook his head. “The accent is Anhui, I’ll give him that. But he’s clearly young. A colonel at that age — that’s at minimum deputy division level or senior regimental commander. You don’t get there by conventional promotion at twenty-something.”
“Maybe post-apocalypse promotion. And the vehicle — you can’t build something like that alone. You’d need a substantial settlement to pull off that kind of modification.”
Old Wei considered this and nodded. “True enough. My jeep’s modified and it doesn’t come close. Maybe he really is a senior officer from the provincial district.” He glanced at the vehicle ahead. “Regardless — I think we trust him once. His capability is real; he has no obvious reason to set us up. And honestly, he seems more worried about us setting him up than anything else.”
“That’s interesting, isn’t it. I noticed the spray-paint on his cab door — ‘maximum occupancy: 1.’ I thought it was a joke. Apparently not.” He tilted his head. “Anyway — Zilong, have you figured out what you’re going to say when we get to the Command?”
“Not really. One step at a time.”
“You’re the educated one. We three are all rough types. At the Command, just tell us what you need.” He turned to the back seats. “Anyone want some music?”
“Sure.”
“Zilong?”
“Whatever you like.”
“Right then.” He reached for the CD player. The cabin filled with sound.
I’m like that little bird in the forest,
struggling free, soaring toward the open sky.
Bravely spreading my wings and closing my eyes,
the horizon only one step away.
I’m like that little bird in the forest,
looking up at the moon — who knows this loneliness?
These blood-stained feathers will not beg fate for mercy…
(End of Chapter 236)